This gospel reading has got me thinking about our St. Brigids community. How do we respond or witness to the teachings of Jesus in our lives – with our lives? How will or do we minister to the most vulnerable? How do we not sit on the sidelines but actually use our lives to show whose disciples we are?
This first bit of our Gospel reading is actually at the end of a pericope that is talking about who he and John the Baptist are. The piece that we hear is Jesus telling us what they are not.
Jesus is responding to expectations that were set by others for both him and John. They are not who we thought we were getting. Neither of them conformed to the expectations or social norms set by others.
Both of them proclaimed what the coming of the Kingdom would look like.
Here in this Gospel, Jesus is accusing those who are listening to him, of hearing but not doing. He says that they are like children calling to each other but refusing to play others’ games. He notes that whether it was him or John who delivered the message, many have heard but few have listened in order to act.
And I as I said before, I have been thinking about this community. One of the questions that I get all of the time is how are we different. What are we trying to do? How are we listening in order to act?
And how much of what we do is set by the expectations of others?
I’d love us to think about how we might act in the world as we are called by God. Each of us is called to be disciples in our own way – we have ministries into which we invest ourselves in our daily lives, ways that we choose to behave because of our particular understanding of the Gospel.
But are there things that we could do as a community? Ways in which we might invest our energy as a group?
Jesus calls us to discern and do God’s work in the world – to uncover and heal that which is broken – and I want to invite us to think about what that is as individuals and what that is for us as a community.
Andrew and I have been talking about creating a commissioning service so that we can within our liturgy here, pray over and commission each other in the thing that we do or go back into after we leave here – so that we take seriously who we are and what we called into by God in our lives.
And I’d love us to be commissioned as a group to go into the world as the community of St. Brigid. I’d love us to be willing to risk as a group, following the Gospel into the world.
We are gathered here in this place and are transformed in our sharing of this Gospel together, around the table together and in song and we are sent as individuals and as a community.
Where are you sent and were might we go together? Where do you risk? Where to you allow yourself the possibility of failure? How do you listen to the invitation of Jesus so that you might act in the world?
